Women who drink beer have a better chance of matching men drink for drink, a new study shows.

A team led by Dr. Charles Lieber, a pathologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, discovered that a stomach enzyme, called chi-alcohol dehydrogenase, is twice as active at breaking down alcohol in men than in women when it comes to hard liquor, but shows no difference when they quaff beer.

When volunteers consumed drinks containing 40 percent alcohol – levels found typically in whisky – the enzyme shot up in men, but not women. But it showed little or no activity when volunteers sipped a solution containing 5 percent alcohol – suggesting that women could hold their own when it comes to drinking beer, which has a lower alcohol content.